“Is my aunt Lucille in trouble?” Her voice was tremulous.

“I think so,” Pearl said. “Please do as I instructed.”

Jesse promised she would, and seemed eager to meet some authority at the house.

After Pearl hung up, she told Lido about Lucille Denner and her classified ad.

“Doesn’t sound like much,” Lido said.

“But better than you know what.”

Pearl called Quinn’s cell.

Quinn walked over to a corner of Renz’s office so he could barely hear Renz’s conversation on his desk phone with Minnie Miner. He figured Renz couldn’t overhear his cell phone call from Pearl.

Pearl stayed on point and kept the conversation brief.

Quinn said, “I’ll pick you up on my way.”

Renz hung up the landline phone at almost the same time Quinn finished his conversation with Pearl.

“Minnie Miner,” Renz said, though he’d already let Quinn know that by using Minnie’s name. He was fishing to see if Quinn would reveal his caller.

“Pearl,” Quinn said, satisfying Renz’s curiosity. “Probably about nothing.”

Renz crossed his arms, waiting, so Quinn told him about his conversation with Pearl.

“You’re right,” Renz said. “Probably some crackpot with a worthless family heirloom. You’ll probably find a bust of Carrie Nation.”

“I might not recognize her,” Quinn said. “Your call?”

“Weaver.”

“You referred to her as Minnie.”

Renz put on his innocent face. “No, I didn’t. Just mentioned Minnie’s name, I’m sure.”

Quinn knew Renz was lying, but arguing would get them nowhere. Renz. You had to watch that bastard every second.

“What did Weaver want?” Quinn asked.

“She said people have told her Minnie Miner mentioned her—though not by name—on Minnie’s ASAP show. “ ‘A new food server at that delicious new restaurant has a secret in her pretty little head,’ I believe were the exact words.”

“You gonna pull Weaver?” Quinn asked.

“She mighta just gotten more valuable right where she is,” Renz said. Knowing Quinn would understand. Weaver was being classified as expendable, though she’d have all the protection the law could muster while she was being dangled as bait before the killer. Would Quinn go for it?

“Make sure she’s covered every second,” Quinn said.

Renz gave him a look. “You know we will. She’s one of ours.”

Quinn knew Renz was sincere. There was no need to mention that leaving Weaver exposed waiting tables while Minnie Miner blabbed away on her TV show might be downright dangerous.

“I’ll give Weaver the word,” Renz said. “Make sure she knows what’s going on.”

And reassure her it’s safe, so she won’t back out.

Quinn left the precinct house and climbed in the Lincoln to pick up Pearl for the drive to New Jersey. When he was tooling along on the FDR Drive, he lit a cigar and used his cell phone to call Weaver. No doubt Renz had already talked to her.

Weaver answered on the third ring, and acknowledged that she and Renz had discussed the Minnie Miner problem.

“You okay with this, Nancy?” Quinn asked, gaining ground on a big stake truck hauling a load of gigantic polyvinyl pipes. For a moment the truck’s exhaust fumes smelled stronger than his cigar.

“I’ve been bait before,” Weaver said. “Even did a stint with Vice for a while. And we know this killer already has me in his sights. I wouldn’t mind a chance to get back at him. This might be fun.”

Quinn doubted that. He was sure Weaver did, too.

He told Weaver about the ad in the Teaneck Tattler in New Jersey, and how he and Pearl were going to drive there and check it out. He thought it would be a good idea to keep Weaver clued in from this point on. They owed her that for the odds she was about to accept.

“Could be nothing,” Quinn said.

“Good leads or bad leads, they teach us something even if we don’t always know it,” Weaver said.

Must be scared, if she’s philosophizing.

“I’ll let you know if anything unusual goes on here at the castle,” Weaver said. “Or anything other than the usual unusual.”

“Be careful at that place, Nancy. The play acting could become serious.”

“Surely you joust,” she said. “And don’t forget I’ve got my knights in shining armor.”

Quinn drew on his cigar and jacked the car’s speed up over the limit, all while passing the truck with the PVC pipes on the right. Though he was on the phone, his eyes were more or less fixed on the road. He was thinking of a dozen things other than driving.

“Don’t take any chances,” he reminded Weaver.

The phone pressed to his ear, he listened to nothing. The connection with Weaver was broken.

63

Quinn drove hard. He and Pearl made good time out of Manhattan to New Jersey. They were soon in Teaneck, and found Lucille Denner’s address on Garritson easily, using the GPS plugged into the Lincoln’s cigarette lighter.

Most of the houses on the block were small, built in the flurry of construction not long after the Second World War. Additions had increased the size of some of them as the families within them had grown. Denner’s house was one of the smaller ones and well kept, painted a pale beige that was almost cream colored, with dark brown shutters and door. There was a white trellis on one side of the house, in what might have been an effort to make it appear wider. Scarlet roses blossomed wildly on vines that had made it halfway up the trellis. On the opposite side of the house was an attached single-car garage. The grass was thick and green and almost to the point where it needed to be trimmed.

Quinn parked the Lincoln blocking the narrow concrete driveway leading from the closed overhead garage door, just in case.

He and Pearl got out of the car and walked up onto the low wooden porch that was painted the same brown as the shutters. Quinn thought he could smell the nearby roses, but that might have been the power of suggestion.

He knocked on the front door several times, and wasn’t surprised when he got no response. Pearl moved over on the porch and tried to peer behind almost-closed drapes but could see nothing inside but darkness. She stayed on the porch while Quinn walked around to the back door and knocked.

Again no response.

He returned through thick grass to the front yard.

“I’m here,” a woman’s voice said.

They turned to see a middle-aged woman, obviously once shapely but now with a thickened waist and neck. She had long graying hair combed to hang straight down, like shutters she was peering between. Quinn thought a middle-aged woman had to be beautiful to wear her hair that way. It made this woman look as if gravity had a special hold on her features. She had an outthrust chin and worried gray eyes.

“Jesse?” Pearl asked.

“Yes. I decided to stand down the street behind a tree and see who arrived at my aunt’s house.” She gave an embarrassed smile that showed crooked teeth. “You two passed inspection.”

“Did you get away from the house immediately when I told you?” Pearl asked.

“Yes. As soon as we got off the phone.”

“Very good,” Quinn said. He tried the front door and found it locked.

Jesse said she had a key and fitted it to the knob lock. It worked with a low and hesitant clatter, as if it might be as old as the house and hadn’t been used often. If there was any other kind of lock on the door, it wasn’t fastened.

Quinn used his large body to block her so he could enter first.

He found himself in a small but well-furnished living room.

Pearl gave Jesse a slight, reassuring smile and said, “You better wait here and we’ll call you.”

Jesse looked dubious but nodded her assent. Now that there were two more people here, people with authority who would know how to handle things, she wasn’t so frightened.